Just after I discovered Judgmental Maps, they posted their newest one; a city I loved and hated for 9 years, New Orleans:

I worked at “school for kids who had no other choice”, and got some extra work at “Yankee College”. When we moved there, we lived west of “Like Chalmette, but cleaner”. Then we moved to “Sorta Lakeview”. We’d drive through “Avoid” quite a bit to get to “Drunk”.

The full size version has yet to be archived, so just click the link to the main page above.

Cool research. A team of 7 researchers, using 3 databases of individuals who are culturally important through history, plotted the migration of those individuals to determine cultural centers.

They visualize this for America:

That really gives meaning to the idea of flyover states. But, pause it and look around a bit. Check out the importance of:

Cincinnati and Louisville in the early to mid 19th century.

How about the Erie Canal being traced out.

The absence of much at all across the Black Belt of the deep South.

San Francisco popping out of nowhere in the 1850’s (before, and everyone forgets about this, not really thriving well after that).

The necklace of cities along the Union Pacific route, through Kansas City, Denver, and Salt Lake City.

The way Salt Lake City and the west coast attract people who bypassed the east coast completely.

The outsized attraction of New Orleans in the early 20th century (as its primacy as a port faded)

The development of the triangle in Texas as oil boomed.

The huge migration to Los Angeles starting in the 1920’s.

And towards the end, the influx of people into Florida.

And for Europe:

During its heydey, notice how the Roman Empire is actually fairly tenuous across the west: everyone’s in Rome in a way they’ve never been in New York.

But as the Empire fades, the centers of western European cultural start popping up before (and during) the barbarian invasions.

The Dark Ages are pretty dark, but there’s clustering across the region we still associate with medieval history: from the Ile de France, arcing northeast towards the low countries, and then back southeast across the central Rhine valley.

In the 12th century, look for Seville and Cordoba popping up under the Moors in Spain. Paris gets brighter at the same time.

Not much going on in northern Italy, until the bright lights come on in the 14th and 15th centuries.

Check out Amsterdam in the 17th century.

I found Vienna quieter than I expected in the 17th and 18th centuries. But look at the lights of Budapest, Prague, and Cracow.

St. Petersburg pops out of nowhere after its founding in the early 18th century.

By 1900, Germany has bright lights … everywhere.

And look at England … whole bunches of people leaving to go to America. Look closely, and you can see some of them coming from Germany in the 1930’s.

You can also see many eastern Europeans heading in the direction of Moscow in the mid 20th century.

So I went and looked. Yes, a lake appeared in the middle of the Sahara. But, of course, there’s water underground, and geologists think a tremor opened up a crack that became a spring. Fair enough, but no mystery.

But what did the locals do? Well, they’re human, so they thought: “Lake. Desert. Lets’ go swimming!”.

This new lake is about 20 miles outside of Gafsa.* This is a small city, of about 100K inhabitants about 100 miles in from the Mediterranean. Here:

I love two things about this picture, and both of them are related to the prejudices of people in the west. First off, I like the natural inclination to get in the water, even if you have to roll up your pantlegs or get your clothes wet. There’s an inclination to think that people in other countries aren’t like us. This is evidence that we have more in common than not. Second, in the developed world, we have a tendency to view Arab countries through the lenses of oil wealth, refugee camps, and terrorists. But Tunisia isn’t like that: it’s been quietly turning into a middle income country for decades. It’s now a well off Arab country with no oil (that’s not to say that the country is in great shape, but I think comparing it to Mexico is reasonable). So anyway, take a look at the clothes. There’s a hundred people there that look like they just got back from The Gap. And it’s not like Gafsa is a major city near an international airport. And yet, not a burqa in sight. That’s not surprising to me, but it may be to some of you.

* I learned some trivia about Gafsa while preparing this: 1) it’s where the Tunisian spring revolution started, and 2) descendants of Romans — Christian and speaking a Romance language — survived here until the late Middle Ages.

I thought I had posted this map several years ago, but I couldn’t find it with the Google.

The most shocking thing for me in looking at this is the minor extent of slavery in Missouri. In a very real sense, the expansion of slavery from Missouri into Kansas was a cause of The Civil War … and yet it just wasn’t that prevalent in Missouri. Perhaps that’s just where the really bad slaveowners congregated.

On the other hand, you can also see why Kansas had so many abolitionists ticked off: you really have to go out of your way to get your slaves up the Mississippi past the Ohio River to get to the Missouri River valley.

It’s called Bir Tawil. It’s 800 square miles of really lousy-looking desert in the Sahara.

There are two borders between Egypt and Sudan. Egypt likes the one drawn in 1899. Sudan likes the one from 1902.

On this map, Egypt likes the straight horizontal border. Sudan likes the jagged diagonal one with the little loop on the left side. This means both countries claim the green triangle, and neither one wants the little black smudge.

I swear a lot, and I’m polite, so I found these cholorpleths interesting:

I grew up in Buffalo in the 80’s, and I think it was a lot swearier than they show it to be. And, my first (professor) job was in Alabama; I actually got negative comments on my evaluations that I had sworn in class. Both these things make me think the map is somehow inaccurate.

FWIW: When I was a young slacker I had a summer job as laborer in a high school. The head custodian made up new swear words. One time he was calling me out in front of the whole crew for some problem with a painting job. And he screams "You paint like a dogfuck!" That wasn’t even one of his better ones, but it got to me, and I started laughing uncontrollably. He tried yelling more, but eventually he started laughing too and just walked away shaking his head.

I have a suspicion that this isn’t quite perfect: New York doesn’t seem large enough for most of the time, and many other states seem too large through most of it.

I wonder if it is actually showing something like number of members of Congress (which has a minimum of 3), although the early showing for some states like Florida suggests not. For example, New York’s population around World War II was something like 50 times as large as some other states, and that’s simply not what’s shown in this cartogram.

Genesis

Information

With the development of internet technology, work at home jobs are increasing in the market. Also setting up small business online with ones own bank savings can provide excellent work at home opportunities. Apart from savings, banks offer0 credit card to cater to short term finance needs. Partial tax payments like tax credits are also available to promote online businesses. Market now offers several alternatives to traditional credit card debt which are helpful to work at home businesses.